Slashdot Mirror
J. P. Barlow — Internet Has Broken the Political System
MexiCali59 recommends an account up at Hillicon Valley on a speech by John Perry Barlow to the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. "The deluge of information available on the Web has made the country ungovernable, according to EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow. 'The political system is broken partly because of Internet,' Barlow said. 'It's made it impossible to govern anything the size of the nation-state. We're going back to the city-state. The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich.' ... Barlow said there is too much going on at every level in Washington, DC, for the government to effectively handle everything on its plate. Instead, he advocated citizens organizing around the issues most important to them. 'There is a circle of fat around the Beltway that is incredibly thick. We can no longer try to run this country from the center. We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges.' Barlow also said that President Barack Obama's election, driven largely by small donations, has fundamentally changed American politics. He said a similar bottom-up structure is needed for governing as well. 'It's not the second coming, everything won't get better overnight, but that made it possible to see a future where it wasn't simply a matter of money to define who won these things. The government could finally start belonging to people eventually.'"
I thought Newt Gingrich was gone?
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
And for being the leading cause of vaginal dryness around the world!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
The government of the United States was never supposed to be the top heavy behemoth it is today. At the time our nation was formed, the states of our federation were intended to be much more autonomous - for exactly the reasons outlined in the article.
Local issues and positions can't be handled fairly from a central authority. A country this big just can't be homogeneous enough for that to work.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
There's too much information available to people! It makes them harder to govern! By golly, when people UNDERSTAND our Policies and can see ALL of our platform, it sure does make it hard to make them like us! When people can actually review what we've done without relying on the news centers, how do we keep up the lies? We're doing our best to keep them as uneducated as possible, by failing to properly support the school system, but they seem to be teaching themselves how politics work by discussing it with other people!
Oh the humanity! What ever will us political figures do if we can't keep the sheep acting like sheep!
...politicians can no longer get away with the same bullshit they once did. Imagine if the Internet was around during Nixon's days, or World War II. Things would have been extremely different.
Politicians have always lied...the difference is that the common person can now find proof about it in a matter of seconds with a single Google search.
Living With a Nerd
I can generate barely-comprehensible political rants too:
porfnig ab kernck
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
he advocated citizens organizing around the issues most important to them
How is that different from what is happening now?
Our elected officials typically understand very little of what they legislate, and often little of the bills they themselves propose. "The shoulder thing that goes up", "tubes", the Patriot act, net neutrality, the bailout. In practice citizens ogranize themselves into some type of lobbying effort to spoon feed their wants and needs to politicians.
Sometimes that organization is in the form of a corporation. Sometimes it is a PAC. Sometimes it is a group of individuals showing up at a rally. But private citizens are driving it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/23/obama-still-lying-shamelessly-about-how-important-small-donors-were-to-his-campaign/
"In the general election, Obama got about 34 percent of his individual donations from small donors, people who gave $200 or less, according to a report from the Campaign Finance Institute. Another 23 percent of donations came from people who gave between $201 and $999, and another 42 percent from people who gave $1,000 or more."
The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich.
Your right, we should tax the information-rich individuals and make them give some of their information away...they do not deserve that much information! (Greedy bastards)
there is too much going on at every level in Washington, D.C., for the government to effectively handle everything on its plate.
Oh he is soooo right! I mean, the government was working perfectly before the internet. Wow, glad I've been shown the light!
The former Grateful Dead songwriter said those disppointed in Obama are disregarding the extent to which the political system is broken.
Well that's OK, because Obama said he was going to help fix it! :)
"There is a circle of fat around the Beltway that is incredibly thick" Barlow said. "We can no longer try to run this country from the center. We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges."
Wow, that is an even better analogy than the internet being a "series of tubes"!
I lost some brain cells beating my head against the desk after reading this "quality" piece, but I do not blame the author as much as I do the speaker. In my opinion, perhaps Washington should stop "clogging the internet tubes" as they would put it...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges.
1. Go play any FPS game on the internet that has dedicated servers
2. Observe how admins treat the players
3. Realize that the level of corruption in our current government probably mirrors admin abuse
4. Plan local government like this?
Nope. It was the telegraph! Finally we could discover the truth about those crooked politicians in real time!
Cool!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Usually when people say "the internet has made it impossible to govern" what they really mean is "the internet has made it impossible to implement hegamony".
Now I didn't do anything as dramatic as RTFA. However, how has the internet changed anything to do with how government should operate? Some things are, and have always been, the jurisdiction of local governments. And other things are, and always will be, the jurisdiction of the federal government. National defense, intrastate transportation, inter and intra national trade regulations, all things that are just as much the job of the Federal government today as they ever were. Are there overlaps and gray areas and give and take? Absolutely, and each level of government's responsibilities shift with time, technology and politics. But how has more information changed the basic breakdown? The Federal government handles the "big picture" and State and local governments handle whatever's left out of that (hazy) definition. I don't see why twitter or facebook or even data.gov are going to change that.
President Barack Obama's election, driven largely by small donations, has fundamentally changed American politics.
As long as he doesn't start governing according to what the polls want, he will be one of the most credible Presidents we've ever had because of his funding.
The Beltway has lost touch with the rest of the country. They have their own aristocracy of power and their goal is to stay in their cushy overpaid jobs and retire very rich. The internet will break up that political aristocracy and make them more accountable to the people.
"We can no longer try to run this country from the center. We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges."
Up to a point. Exception - Arizona's new immigration law that gives way too much power to local police and tramples our Fourth Amendment rights - what's this BS about "proving" I'm a citizen and "proving" that I'm innocent? You're brown? Gotta be an illegal! Off to jail!
"Google’s capacity to control human thought makes the Catholic church jealous, I bet," Barlow said. "They wish they’d thought of it."
Huh? That makes no sense. Google controls human thought as much as the Encyclopedia Britannica did when I was a kid.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
as communications improve it's easier to govern a nation. The Romans built roads and were able to govern the largest empire at the time. in the US as communications improved people have looked to washington DC more and more for everything. the critical point was television. only the president could get on it so everyone assumed the president did everything. no one cares about their senator/governor/mayor anymore. the president does everything.
the problem is that it's not true and there are laws in place to prevent it and people don't understand why the president and the federal government can't do everything. yet blame everything on it
What broke the political system was allowing money to be the deciding factor. He with the most cash, usually wins. You won't see any news organizations report that aspect of the story, because they count on that multi-billion dollar infusion every campaign season.
Now that the activist right wingers on the supreme court have opened it up for unlimited corporate money, it's only going to get worse.
Barlow also said that President Barack Obama's election, driven largely by small donations
Obama's election wasn't driven by "small donations". It was driven by the fact that the country was sick of GWB and the GOP. Any Democrat not named Jane Fonda would have won in 2008. Obama's fund-raising achievements were very impressive but I wouldn't credit them with securing his victory.
Timing is everything in politics. If John McCain had beaten Bush in 2000 he would have gone on to be President (and the last eight years would have been very different, but that's another discussion). If Obama had run in 2004 he would have gotten creamed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
To summarize, the Internet is the solution. The internet is the problem. We're connected, but not engaged. We're "networked" but not mobilized. We're Friends and Followers, but not active and acting.
We've come so far, we have so far to go.
The internet has allowed people to become much more informed than they once were, but it also lends itself to pointless bloviating on /. that ultimately accomplishes no political change. Like this.
"Google’s capacity to control human thought makes the Catholic church jealous, I bet," Barlow said. "They wish they’d thought of it."
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how exactly Google is controlling my thoughts. Sure, I use google, and gmail, and I have a Droid... how does that equate to controlling my thoughts? Maybe they have unique access to my thoughts, as written down, but that is a far different thing than control.
File this one under Rant/Drug Induced/EFF Nonsense
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Is it me or does this summary make no fucking sense whatsoever?
You just got troll'd!
The problem is that we ever tried to manage the country centrally in the first place.
Any network or systems administrator will tell you that managing a diverse set of systems centrally is difficult. The only way you can pragmatically do that is with uniform conformity through diktat.
Unless you want to verge into absolute dictatorship, managing many smaller systems centrally is difficult if not possible, leading to a lot of loose ends and bad ideas. The founding fathers realized this, which is part of the reason they went for "limited powers" in the Federal government. There's only so much that a single person or body of people can multitask.
Unfortunately, we've forgotten this reality many times in the past 200 years, leading to an excess of government. "Big government" has to be small out of necessity of self-preservation, or scope creep will grow it to a colossal, unsupportable size.
Think of government as a compute cluster, or cluster of clusters, if you will. If you send jobs off to a cluster, which then sends jobs off to a node, you're trying to balance the overall computation amongst all available systems so no one node/processor doesn't get overtly taxed. This is the opposite of a "we're here to help" federal government: all jobs go up to the process scheduler/dispatcher, and get stuck there, while the lower levels of government (state, county, local) largely ignore what are ultimately their own affairs (poverty, crime, unemployment, civil projects, etc.) because the Federal government "is here to help".
This is why community gardens often thrive, while government food subsidy/distributions are usually failures (in terms of results as well as costs). Local problems need to be dealt with locally.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
the problem with the "destroy government" crowd is that we need strong regulations for something like the economy to work. since 1994 when the republicans took over congress, we have systematically taken away governmental regulatory powers over the economy and wall street. the result is the financial meltdown in 2008
so obviously, we need a strong central authority to monitor and control the economy to keep it healthy. the libertarian myth of unicorns and leprechauns and a marketplace which regulates itself is factually and historically false, just study the banking panics of the 1800s and why we had the great depression in the 1930s: this what you get with a marketplace that is not regulated. the natural state of the marketplace is manipulation of the market by its largest players (corporatism) and constant bubbles and pops (greed, then fear and panic: all you need is simple human psychology for that). the libertarian myth of a level headed marketplace of equals is mythmaking, not reality
that being said, there are plenty of areas of bloat where the government can and should be downsized. its just that i see no intelligence in the "destroy government" crowd, just a lot of people with an almost religious fanaticism to the idea of small government, ready to hack away at everything. we need intelligence on the issue: WHERE do we cut, because obviously we don't cut everything, especially with the need for the strong regulation of the economy
to deny that is to simply stand in complete denial of what 14 years of deregulation of the economy wrought in 2008
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The real power of democracy is overthrowing the veil of pretend democracy, which advocates ignorance to a sub-par governance system.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
Sounds like he's complaining that the Internet has made the central government more democratic. This doesn't require that we govern more at the local level (although we could). It just means the old regime that could control the central higher-level government won't function efficiently because the masses are now capable of being more involved.
The Internet has increased the democratic nature of government. This doesn't necessarily make the job harder, just different. The large central government now must function more like the smaller local governments for which he is advocating. Makes his "solution" seem unnecessary.
Corporate greed and the ease for them to "purchase" government officials, the total lack of oversight in spending and operation, ignoring the will of the people and doing whatever the f*ck the governments wants, the constant blaming the "other" party for any problems, trying to fix things and sway the people with marketing instead of any actual actions, the corruption (Sure BP is at fault for the oil spill, but wasn't our government supposed to make sure they were in compliance? Oh that's right, it's just cheaper to buy them off with hookers and cash. Gotta keep the share holders happy.), becoming so large that it's just utterly inefficient to run has made the country ungovernable...
There, fixed that for you.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
the us gov. Was broken before the internet. The internet just enabled everyone to know how fricking hopeless it actually is. In all actuality, I don't think there is a country in the present with anything more than a corrupt, dysfunctional government. Think about it. It's pretty dismal all over. The world needs more functional psychopaths running it.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
> The government could finally start belonging to people eventually
I know a certain circle of influential fat that will be working hard to make sure that doesn't happen.
Good luck fighting them.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
"The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich." You mean that the powers that be can't piss on our heads and tell us it's rain when we're no longer wearing blinders, nose in the feedbag and under sensory deprivation. We can smell it, we can taste it, we know we're getting pissed on. Maybe we wouldn't be so upset if they were doing their job of governing the country instead of focusing on keeping us baffled and confused while robbing us blind?
The Internet is the printing press turned up to 11. We saw the kind of shitstorm that swept Europe when Guttenburg started cranking out his bibles.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The Internet is a global phenomena. Many countries with repressive Governments are afraid of it. Thats why they try to limit it in their jurisdiction.
Sp which country were we talking about again? China? Iran ? UK ? Australia?
they turn to fertilizer
the idea that the government created the greed in the hearts of bankers is obviously false, but it is more disturbing that so many people like yourself think that the banks needed government encouragements to act greedily
the community reinvestment farce is indeed a misstep by the government, and was wrong, and contributed to the 2008 meltdown, absolutely. but it is no more than propagandistic alternative reality mythmaking to believe this is the causative agent of the meltdown in 2008. do you do not see that it merely enabled simple human greed? it scares me about you and anyone else who believes this nonsense
"If the Federal government had stayed out of it, it wouldn't have happened."
you really believe that? you really believe a marketplace without regulation functions better?
at best, you can say government missteps hurt, and that the government needs better policy. but please don't tell me you actually and honestly believe that no government regulation somehow results in healthier marketplaces. if you honestly believe that, i really fear for this country, that somebody can be so deluded
please read up on economic history. please educate yourself about how the economy actually hurts. please admit to yourself that the marketplace's greatest enemies to stability and health are NATURAL enemies (manipulation by large players, simple human psychology of greed and then fear and panic). please wake up from the propaganda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
tell that to the riaa lawyers in DOJ and all the shill posts hes handed out and how hes trying to screw the world with economic terrorism with ACTA
"Your political system has broken my internets"
(Well, wait a few years and see)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I saw this in TFA:
"The political system is broken partly because of Internet," Barlow said. "It's made it impossible to govern anything the size of the nation-state. We're going back to the city-state. The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich."
And then this:
"Speaking at Personal Democracy Forum in New York on Thursday, Barlow said there is too much going on at every level in Washington, D.C., for the government to effectively handle everything on its plate. Instead, he advocated citizens organizing around the issues most important to them."
Ok, so which it? Too much information, or too much government?
I can tell you, in my opinion, if you think you have too much information about the government, you have too much government. And if the complaint really is that there is too much going on in Washington for citizens to make sense of because they can actually get information on it, there is TOO MUCH going on in Washington.
Nice try, though.
I also read this comment:
"I explained it like this: Would you, in Sweden, approve of someone in Portugal being able to set laws that regulated what you did?"
Um, that sounds EXACTLY LIKE THE EU. Except Portugal needs to get a few other nations to gang up on Sweden. Look into the feta cheese controversy in the EU. Nice. This is an argument for or against states' rights and Article Ten how?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
While I don't disagree that more local responsibility and governance would be a good trend, the idea that adding more information and more information flow efficiency makes the system inherently ungovernable is both counter-intuitive, and almost certainly wrong.
It's true that adding more information and failing to manage that information and its use would make a mess. But along with more information, we've also added such things as - Google, to select just the information you need from the sea of information, like - Wikis, to make intranet (distributed) team cooperation much more effective, like - service-oriented architectures and workflow systems, to pool the services of multiple agencies into a more informed, coherent larger decision-support and transaction system.
And the Internet, through social information sharing and interaction, is breaking down cultural barriers (and making ignorance or parochialism a necessarily willful and socially unacceptable state to be in.)
I predict that the Internet, and distributed information and transaction systems, will allow for more effective governance at even larger scales than the nation-state, as well as more effective nested federal (jurisdiction-sharing) forms of governance at every level down the hierarchy.
We just got a global nervous-system, and the beginnings of a global memory and mind. That's only likely to cause us to descend to tribalism if it provokes a fearful backlash from the willfully ignorant, or those unwilling to compromise, discuss, and share at many levels with many sizes of surrounding societies.
If done while maintaining democracy and responsibility at all levels, this technology could lead to better governance, and governance at the global scale we clearly require to face down several serious global issues we have created for ourselves. We've got global trade and business. A counterbalancing force of effective and democratic global governance is now needed, and technologically possible.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
yes, it is a shame that so many democrats are so spineless and do not stand up to republican idiocies like market deregulation
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ironic how The Peoples' Republic of America has been found "ungovernable" and surprise, surprise: the answer is governing at the STATE level! It's almost as if this guy is channelling the Founders.
. . . are destine to lament for the "good old days." Ignorance is bliss, and when a few controlled the limited communication channels, you didn't hear about a lot of things. Things such as lynchings in the South, neighborhood rapes, police abuse of force, childhood abductions from poor families, and most indiscretions of the powerful. Now you hear about a lot more of it, as anyone with a video camera can become Edward R. Murrow. Most seem to be more like Jerry Springer, but taste aside, which do you prefer -- ignorance or spam? There is a downside to everything.
There is no "THE Political System". There are
political systems.
Twitter and Facebook handily defeated the flimsy
government of Iran.
Another Jon Katz wannabe.
Yours In Ashgabat,
Kilgore Trout
No, we simply don't believe that it was greedy bank behavior that cause the meltdown. It was government-provided immunity. Nobody had to care about the credit quality of mortgages--they were Fannie Mae insured!
yes, the feds forgot to lock the doors. which allowed the robbers to steal the loot. so you blame the feds, and give the robbers a pass! and then, you conclude that the real solution to the robbery is to take off the doors entirely!
Attempting to choose what is good for us ranges from bad to disastrous...
the regulations don't tell you how to live your life, fool. the regulations simply prevent you from committing crimes. duh. is it your assertion that if we had no laws against mugging and no police to stop muggers that no one would get mugged? then why the hell do you believe that an unregulated marketplace will have no crimes committed? why are you so daft? ...often because the regulators become pawns of the regulated.
on this part i agree with you 100%. so it is my assertion that we should get the graft and corruption out of the police department. meanwhile, you assert we should get rid of the police department!
what the hell is wrong with you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So the feds and the kill switch they want so bad starts to look a bit like a gun duct taped to your head eh?
naturally bubbles and pops, and is naturally prone to manipulation by its largest players
this is not "different interpretation" of anything, this is simple and obvious economic history and truth, despite all libertarian myth making and wish fulfillment fantasy fiction to the contrary
BAD government regulation hurts and must be corrected
but NO government regulation destroys economies. really. study your economic history
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The political system is broken because money has taken over the input to our representatives and megacorporate control of media has taken over the output to the voters.
That is to say, it's the same problem, both ways.
Our democracy has become overwhelmed by the concentration of wealth in a few hands, owing to vacuous sophistry that skews our economic system towards one that shovels money to those who have it and entrains the lives of those who don't.
People who call any attempt at regulation or any braking of the egregious concentration of wealth "socialism" are buying into a psychological campaign of misinformation that is used to suck the foundation of the country out from under them.
While it's possible to get rich and not become a plutocrat, that just takes one person out of the stream and leaves hundreds of others to let the money tell them what to do.
If you want to fix this information economy, you need to get control of the economy first, so that the money doesn't overwhelm the information.
I agree that the Internet hasn't broken the political system - it's merely revealed its flaws, so they can now be fixed.
...and I'm sure I'm forgetting many things, because the government does so much.
But I disagree utterly that we need less central authority. We need Federal-level policies and regulations **because of** the size of this country. If a structure isn't clear at the top level, the results are breeding spots for corruption, mismanagement and chaos.
Perhaps we may be in agreement, if "local issues and positions" don't include:
- worker's rights
- environmental regulations, food regulations, or large corporate or industrial regulations of any sort.
- social security
- medicare
- roads
- FEMA
- NASA>br> - the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. etc.
We can see right now what not enough Federal involvement in offshore drilling has given us. As a side note, I'd like to recommend the Facebook group: "Plugging the gulf oil leak with the complete works of Ayn Rand".
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
The internet has made it too hard to hide the crap that we don't want you to see. You see much less of what's going on at the local level these days because everyone's online reading all the whistleblowing in Washington, which is making Washington crooks reassess local extortion opposed to national extortion.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
There is no need for a republic any more the representatives of constituents dont need to ride by horse back across the country to cast votes for their supporters. In this day and age a true democracy can reign. Every person with a social security number should be able to log into a secure portal and cast votes. or goto an ATM machine or post office etc and cast a ballot on a touch screen. Not everyone will vote only those who are so informed will actually be participating. It would be a true government of the people for the people and by the people.
The country is not "becoming more polar every day". Read a little history...it is and always has been polar. That is a strength, not a weakness. Diversity, right?
Also, the logic of the article is flawed. Study after study has shown Obama's primary funding was not some unprecedented tidal wave of small donors: Wall Street and large corporate donations made Obama's advantages. Wall Street because they knew they were going to need bailing out (in all sense of the word) and large corps because large corps love large government.
That said, I like the conclusion...less central government, more distributed decision-making. The change from a decentralized, Jeffersonian ideal to the current near-DC-opoly occured in fits and starts, it did not happen simply when the Federalists "won". And it really gained its momentum when the Democratic Party was founded - explicitly by the way - to use tax money to get elected (and pay off) politicans who would avoid bringing up issues that might lead to the defeat of slavery. The "spoils system" as centralized government was openly called at that time, was the primary tool the newly founded Democratic party used to reward politician to stay quiet on the slavery issue.
How the Democratic party manages to spin themselves as the friend of black people is amazing to me. First they fight against outlawing slavery, to the point of nearly destroying the country, then they re-enslave millions of blacks with government "benefits" programs that also destroy the family structure, and support abortions which overwhelmingly destroy black babies (20 million-ish so far?). No wonder liberals fought so hard to control the educational system: no honest reading of history could lead you to think Democrats want anything other than total control over the black population.
I have to hand it to Democrats and the liberal machine...they've pulled off a massive marketing coup.
Protecting and enforcing the values upon which the nation was founded does not require massive micro management.
(emphasis mine)
That does mean bringing back slavery, as slavery was a core institution at the time the US were founded. Too often people say "but it's not in the constitution!" either as a knee-jerk reaction or as a weak attempt to say that something is not permissible. How about instead of talking about the constitution all the time we have a real debate?
What bugs me is that so much of the so-called "states rights" movement is nothing more than a series of pick-and-choose ideas. We don't want federal programs (except Medicare! And agricultural subsidies! And small-business loans!) We don't want the federal government involved in schools (but we want school prayers! And no evolution!) We don't want environmental regulations (but now the Louisiana governor wants the government involved in cleaning the oil spill!) And on and on and on... The constant whining for small government has little credibility anymore.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I prefer to think of the political system being broken as being that the curtain is not there and we can now see all the tawdry crap and back room deals. What is wrong with that? Well other than the public having to face the fact that it really is a realm of crap not much. What it will do going forward is increase accountability and that is what many people actually don't want. See, with the curtain there we can all shake our heads and just say "its dirty but it works" but with the curtain gone we lose the excuse of tolerating it. We become bound by the fact we know whats wrong and still many won't do anything. Its like seeing someone do something unsavory and turning the other cheek except now there are lots of unsavory things and the people around you see it too, can we collectively shrug off the event when the knowledge is so wide spread?
Obama came to Washington promising that politics of the usual would not occur, but that wasn't his to give, we gave it to ourselves and we must make it mean something
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Internet has EXPOSED the political system.
http://www.connect2congress.com
The government could finally start belonging to people eventually.
I hope not. "The people" have never been fit to govern themselves. The reason the US has worked to date is that our republican system allows a crude meritocracy to function (those with more money have more influence.) I would say that as democracy has expanded, the position of the US has declined.
Advice: on VPS providers
Your post pretty much consists of worthless ranting but one term caught my eye: corporate anarchists. I've heard people use it before but what on earth does it mean? There is no wikipedia entry on it. Can you define it? And if you can't, why are you using it?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
It's ironic that Obama is cast as an example of decentralized governance, as both his own rhetoric and his party represent the direct growth and empowerment of centralized, Federal power.
The original precepts of the Republican party used to be about the DEcentralization of governance and local control as much as possible. Sadly, the Bush II administration (and the Republican-controlled congressional fellow-travelers) proved that was no longer true, and that the Right is now just about feeding DIFFERENT pigs from the same Federal trough as the Left.
I wish we had a real conservative party, not just liberals colored with evangelical colors. :|
-Styopa
To add to that, if Obama had run in 2004, he might have won. Bush's reputation was already declining, but the Dems ran John Kerry as their candidate - who was an incredibly milquetoast, establishment character that failed to attract any attention, and he did a terrible job of dealing with attacks on his war record. As terrible a candidate as Kerry was, he only lost the election by, I believe two states' worth of electoral votes. A better candidate could have won that race.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
It is not so much that the American governmental system is trashed. The world as we know it has crashed. Nations come and go and the forces at play probably mean that the U.S. will fall into history much like the Soviet union collapsed.
Like all that came before us we never established fairness and equity in law nor in wealth. All of the various customs,laws and rules that built our institutions have turned one upon the other to create a complexity that does not yield. Tell an employee that she is dressed nicely and you can have a legal problem. Lay off the highest paid employees and it always will be the most senior employees and age discrimination suits are upon you. So you must lay off many more, younger employees to accomplish the same budget and that can be followed by the younger employees taking it as age discrimination. Over and over again things twist beyond all understanding. We now suffer a huge national crises simply because financial instruments became so contorted that they could not be understood nor well regulated. And we have an oil company of huge reputation that lied and dummied reports to the hilt, got people killed, and has now destroyed the most productive fishery in the U.S.. Our ship is sinking and our people are drowning.
Mr. Barlow belongs to the "keep the people stupid" school of thought.
I mean I am a doctor. I could complain that the "internet" is a real pain in the ass because patients come in asking lots of questions nowadays. In fact some of them come up with diseases even I have never heard of (except as a footnote in some text). I could claim that INFORMATION IS BAD and is standing in the way of my medical practice.
Or I could make sure I was good at my job, congratulate those patients who manage to correctly self-diagnose, and educate the ones who don't. But I guess asking a politician to put some effort into his job is going over the top.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Don't idiots every get tired of blah-blahing that response over and over again?
It sometimes does get tiresome repeating things until they're understood.
The reason it gets brought up so often is that it's a handy counter to the idea that original framing/intent is the best yardstick for how to interpret and observe the constitution. There are good reasons we don't want everything exactly the way it was originally meant (to the extent that you can even find total consensus on how things should be from the people who wrote the constitution). There are good reasons why the arbiters of the law have interpreted things differently over the years.
There may also be bad reasons, and maybe you have good reasons for a stricter reading of the 10th amendment. Maybe your reasons are better than those for the courts and the people who've worked in the executive branch. But one thing's for sure, if someone brings up "the values upon which the nation was founded", they're going to hear about slavery, and justifiably so until they actually make the real connection: "because it's how they did/saw things in late 1780s" isn't good enough as a reason.
Tweet, tweet.
...killed the video star!
Sen [Name] is an opportunist, who's got a real talent for [talent]. But he and his [party affiliation] buddies have broken the political system. Because they hate [something important]. They're [vitriolic adj/noun combo], hiding behind the brand name [political adjective].
FTFY
Wow. Somebody's been drinking a big helping of Ma Pelosi's Pot & Kettle Kool-Aid. In slightly modified form (name, party, adjectives), your remark can easily apply to 90% of the politicians in Washington. Take the blinders off.
we both agree on that
i believe the solution is to clean up the government
why do you believe that the solution is to get rid of the government?
bad regulation compounds an existing problem. you believe bad regulation is actually the source of the problem. this is like saying that if the police didn't have corrupt officers that no one would get robbed. hilarious!
you're daft, you're insane, you are hopelessly propagandized
please try to understand that having no regulations is far, far worse than whatever problems we have. really. take your kneejerk blinders off for once and examine the simple truth, please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Internet itself grew out of a Defense Dept. project, transferred over to the NSF, and now administered (and yes, there has to be some administration of it) by the U.S. Commerce Department. Lots of federal government involvement here.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the text of Mr. Barlow's speech - but the part cited by the author doesn't inspire confidence in his insight. California's issues are a microcosm of the federal problems, exacerbated by the initiative process. The state has become governed by mass vote via initiatives. In effect, every single person has become a special interest, or at the least easily manipulated by them. That process is not dominated by the net, thought it has slightly worsened the severity of the problem. With initiatives having hamstrung the budget process, the government is unable to flex the budget to accommodate economic reality, or reduce a budget bloated with special interest projects without now cutting vital services. "The Edge" isn't the answer, it is a large part of the problem. The reason we have a representative government is that the people who created the Constitution saw that what was needed was people who could look at the overall picture and set priorities and see them through. We need to do what the founders expected of us, elect intelligent people of good conscience with the courage to set priorities and actually make decisions regardless of the consequences to their political future. This is true at both the state and federal level. Too often, we elect people based on a beauty contest, asking too few questions and demanding too few answers, and then we fail to let them do the job we elected them to do. Governance from the "Edge" would be a surrender to chaos.
the idea that missteps by the government is the basis for greed in this world is of course, insane
but you give a little to the faux news progandized fools rhetorically, and maybe you can nudge them into giving a little back in terms of examining and maybe even reluctantly accepting the simple obvious truth: we need good regulation, not no regulation
that government missteps, no matter how major, minor, remotely tangentially related, or frame job recharacterized (as with the CRA), cannot even remotely compete with the disaster that results when we simply deregulate the economy. which is exactly what 2008 shows. you would think 2008 would put to bed this debate once and for all
yet these propagandized fools still deny the simple truth, and instead weave an alternate reality narrative in which villains become heroes, heroes become villains, minor tangentially related details become crucial turning points, and other such nonsense. the next step is for the almost religiously fanatical free market fundamentalists to start pointing at conspiracy theories and other last gasp attempts in building a massive wall of denial
rather than accepting the simple truth: an unregulated market is far worse than a regulated market. we need government intervention to keep the market stable and healthy. rock of gibraltar solid truth
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't agree with Barlow's statement. I think I understand what he was trying to say, but it strikes me like he said it in an entirely inept way.
The political system is already broken. Congress is mostly owned by business. The Citizens (or the "Consumers") don't have much influence over the government.
Freedom of the press was guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. This has been eroded slowly over the years. IMHO the biggest damage to this freedom has been in the form of the megacorps. Most news (not all, but most) comes from one source.
The internet has made citizen journalism possible once again. (The definition on Wikipedia is better at explaining why this is important to a supposedly "open" society.)
And speaking of "Personal Democracy," it seems that citizen journalism would be a requirement for it to exist.
Barlow's comment sounds like he is critical of the internet as though it destroyed something valuable to our society.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Where there's a will (and a control freak), there's a way. Government isn't going to give up power that easy, I would expect some dangerous new automated monitoring systems are on the horizon. Along with some interesting countermeasures. We may start looking for browsers that will automatically surf dozens of unrelated sites for every site you browse just so that the collected data will be too erroneous to properly evaluate. Of course, that itself labels you a subversive...
Slashdot, you borked the governmentation with the help of the intertubes!
Shame on you, you insensitive clods!
The problem is that formerly senators and other "statesmen" we pretty much placed in high regard and respected. Today, there are no respected senators because we know way too much about their personal lives, personal failings and everything else about them.
It is very difficult to respect someone after their wife slaps them in public. Or is caught doing unsavory things in a mens room. Or they didn't pay all the taxes that are due. Or it is disclosed that they were caught shoplifting when they were 12. Forgive and forget? I'm sorry, the Internet doesn't forget. Ever.
So now we have a bunch of unrespected, rather unremarkable people trying to govern the country. They are finding it difficult to gather much support for anything. Electing a new crop of unrespected, unremarkable people isn't going to fix anything.
How do we fix this? Well, it probably isn't fixable, at least not in the short term. You see, all the respected statesmen of yesteryear had just as many failings as the folks in office today, except we didn't know about them. And the people that did had some common sense to understand that shouting it from rooftops would (a) personally destroy good people and (b) make it impossible for them to be effective in their job. Today, you get money for destroying people and nobody cares about what happens to these people in government. They did the crime, they get to do the time - or something like that.
The great Freeman Dyson is probably in Princeton right now enjoying the most smug can of Ensure since Bob Dole won the Republican Presidential nomination in 1996. If you haven't read his "The Sun, The Genome and The Internet" go do so. Written back in '99, it is incredibly insightful given how accurate it has proven to be. Dyson argues that the Internet can and will change education since it can (potentially) eliminate the advantages of students living in large cities have over those from rural areas. His arguments can be easily extended to politics: one of the original purposes of representative legislatures was to solve the logistical impossibility of disseminating information over long distances, as would be necessary in a direct democracy that isn't confined to a single city, as in ancient Greece. With that obstacle now gone, are we ready to ditch the representation?
I love that you put Republican in bold, as if it needs no further explanation that Republicans are the worst sort of human being since Nazis. Just because half of them are assholes doesn't mean the party doesn't stand for anything worthwhile and doesn't have millions of decent, sensitive, rational people in its membership.
I'm liberal, and if you want decentralized government, it's okay by me. It is, in fact, a platform plank of the Green Party.
However, I live in Alabama, and when I hear someone talk about state's rights, it's usually because of poorly disguised resentment over racial integration. People say the Civil War was really about state's rights, but they're unable to name one important state right Alabama lost except for the right to own people. Though the slavery argument may not be correctly directed at you, it is not exactly a strawman argument.
If you want people to stop directing these arguments at you, you should loudly and clearly distance yourself from the modern cult of "conservatism" that claims to want limited government, but is glad to, for example, vote away a state's right to allow gay people to marry with the power of a Constitutional amendment.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
The internet only assisted in breaking the political system by making propaganda easier to distribute, and hastening uniformity of thought within political subcultures. The political system in the USA was broken when the major parties of both wings adopted the same strategy to gain adherents - push the opposition to the extreme.
But of course Barlow is wrong. He is one of those... oh, I wish we couldn't even say the word anymore... REPUBLICANS. Let's just give them a certain color hat to wear, eh?
Corporate anarchists are people who want to eliminate government, creating a power vacuum that corporations fill.
It's not worthless ranting. You should be paying closer attention.
--
make install -not war
The internet enables a pretty ideal democracy.
It is now actually feasible to hold majority votes on any and all important issues. People will both effectively be able to inform themselves and we will be effectively able to collect votes (without massive cost arising from it). No one is able to silence the opposition or discerning opinions either.
And our representatives that make decisions on urgent or smaller business, they can be effectively monitored in their work.
That's how we should want this. More of it, with actual power behind it. Not less. Yes, the masses are stupid, and its a risk to be a democracy. But its the only way we can avoid abuse and tyranny by individuals - far more likely to make everyone unhappy than the masses themselves.
Is paved with the bricks from Utopia.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
a.k.a "campaign contributions. They are bribes because the politician can convert them to personal funds if he/she doesn't run for office again. That's why they are always campaigning, 7/24/365 ... to increase their personal wealth. Thank Congress for that. They could have said no to the bribes.
I didn't vote for him, but Pres Obama won a landslide victory to enact, among other things, universal, single payer health care legislation.
Then the corporate lobbyists took over, greased the politicians palms, and suddenly the politician "see problems" with what the large majority of American voters asked for. Members of Obama's own party are just as guilty as the Republicans in accepting bribes to feather their own nests at the expense of our Republic. Then those deceitful corporations put up some pseudo "grass roots" websites pretending to be "ordinary" Americans (just the way Microsoft talked dead people into writing letters to Congress telling them to call of the DOJ), hired a few buses and filled them with rent-a-protesters, who made each of their Tea Party stops look like part of a ground swell movement. Those Conservatives who got emails from employees of "prosperityforamerica.com", or similar sounding sites, didn't know enough to do a WHOIS on the domain name and see who actually paid for the domain and what organizations are actually behind them. They would have found a dozen different websites were all fronted by corporate Republicans, just another part of the corporation lobbying campaign. Those crafty corporate sponsors of Republican shenanigans caught wind of some folks actually doing a WHOIS and reporting the results, so they now hide their sites behind anonymous proxies to conceal their identity. If THAT didn't tell you all you needed to know about their ethics and intent then you are not smart enough to vote.
The corporate lobbyists who are behind Socialist causes act just as corruptly as the "free market" corporate lobbyists do. So do the non-profits, except they claim to be lobbying for noble purposes. The effect is the same, however, the will of the people is thwarted when one lobbyist with a bag full of "campaign contributions" can nullify the votes of tens, hundreds, thousands or millions of voters. Thank Congress. Millions of voters didn't want Congress to put a "cap" on BP's financial exposure to their environmental pollution, but that is why now, by law, BP's financial accountability for the Gulf of Mexico disaster is only $75 million Dollars! Exxon put up a good front in the Valdez disaster, and made lots of nice sounding promises too. But after public interest waned their lawyers took over. Just THIS YEAR, 24 years later, they settled the last of the lawsuits filed against them ... and over all paid only ten cents on the dollar. Thank Congress for that.
The problem is the Corporations are NOT corpus. They are NOT living individuals and they should NOT have the rights of living, breathing people. Lobbying, for what ever cause, even high moralistic ones, should be outlawed. A CEO does NOT deserve to have his or her vote counted thousands of times while you or my vote is counted only once. Thank Congress for that.
That's what broke out political system, and it has been a long time coming. You can't continue raping the Goose the laid the Golden Eggs and expect the Gold to continue. We are now out of jobs because we are out of manufacturing plants. We are out of resources because we don't make things to last. Sales have to "grow" so things are made to wear out, and wear out quickly. We are polluting our environment because we want to retire before we reach 50 and live like Kings with several castles each. Even our "Green House Guru" can't live in a home that respects the environment. His house has to leave a Carbon foot print that is ten times that left by the average citizen.
Finally, when you voted for a Congress person because their ear mark gave you a job on a highway that went to no where, or on an air port that only the congressman uses, or for research into the sex life of a hammer, he BRIBED YOU. YOU CAN THANK YOURSELVES FOR THAT.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
bubbles and pops and is manipulated by large players
do you deny that?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
don't you understand you're just pawns for corporations?
if the government is not there to regulate the market, it is dominated instead by its largest players
do you believe a corporation beholden to no one but its shareholders is a superior dominant player ot the government? for all their fuckups, the government is beholden to us. don't you understand that?
you fucking fools see so much with what is wrong with government. but you don't understnad that things would be FAR WORSE without the government there to regulate things
truly, you are libertarians and free market fundamentalists will be the ruin of us all. wake the fuck up from your ignorant idealistic trance, PLEASE
you propagnadized tools of corporations, and you don't even fucking know it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'There is a circle of fat around the Beltway that is incredibly thick. We can no longer try to run this country from the center. We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges.'
The country has to be run from the center on the most basic issues - human rights, constitutional rights, etc. We can't have a local government deciding not to hire colored people as a matter of local policy anymore than we can have HOA dog litter policies for my community mandated by the federal government.
I really am annoyed when some dipshit tries to make headlines with assertions like this, regardless of who he or she is.
in a real and true democracy there can be NO representation in lieu of the people
representational government has always been broken .. it is at best a limited dictatorship .. the Internet has just make it obvious to anyone that can and is whiling see it
when you allow for a 50% plus 1 so called democratic system .. what you in truth have is the best system ever designed to allow the elite .. a ruling class to dominate and control the masses
IE sounds good on paper even enticing .. but as the old saying goes does not work in practice .. and trust me if you will it was no accident .. the only place that it was to some extent workable was with in the city states .. because once you move to the level of the nation state .. individuals .. cities .. bio-regions ETC .. all have the probability and possibility for self interests .. and unless cooperation and empowerment are your guiding principles .. which are provably better for the vast majority of the individuals .. and not competition and control which can be extremely beneficial to some individuals .. the elite .. a ruling class .. it will inevitably end up in a state of conflict which at it's extreme ends in open warfare .. now there is an oxymoron
the true place of liberty and sovereignty are with the individual .. once these are deemed to be the prerogative of the state .. be it city or nation .. liberty and sovereignty do not exist for the individual anymore than they do under dictators and monarchs .. and it introduces and allows for the means of control and domination by an elite .. a ruling class .. all that 50% plus 1 democracy has done is replace overt dictators .. kings .. queens .. and there attending courts with so called representatives decision and LAW makers .. but in essence nothing has really changed .. you still have the elite .. a ruling class .. it just sounds different and looks different
it has allowed the extremes of opinions and self interests to disproportionately manifest and dominate .. and takes the focus off of the elite .. the ruling class .. all the while allowing for the control the nepotism ETC.
the basic needs of all people are essentially the same everywhere on earth .. the basic function of society is the same for all creatures that socialize .. MUTUAL protection and MUTUAL benefit .. if the principles of lowest COMMON denominator and scale effect are not foundational .. respected and understood the society will always FAIL .. it is why the ideals of private ownership and so called free-market economics as dominate principles are so unworkable .. and if they are enshrined in a system will guarantee a perpetual state of competition and the perpetuation of the elite .. a ruling class .. which is not to say or advocate for an absence of personal spaces and possessions .. they just have to limited and be clearly defined .. if the principles of empowerment and cooperation vs. competition and control do not come to dominate human interaction .. we as species will not survive on this planet for much longer
representational democracy and capitalism are the very things that have allowed the the ruling class to thrive in modern times .. they have foster the ideals of compe
Criticizing a Democrat does not make you a Republican.
> At the time our nation was formed, the states of our federation were intended to be much more autonomous - for exactly the reasons outlined in the article.
True. But at the time our nation was formed, it was formed in response to the problems with the lack of federal authority in the Articles of Confederation. We wanted a powerful central government. (Or at least the federalists did, and they won.) We wanted to limit its power--Virginia was particularly instrumental in that, IIRC--but we wanted enough government power that we would be one nation rather than the loose confederation of states with no unified foreign policy that perpetually warred with itself that we saw in the history of Europe.
It's also important to keep in mind that when we were founded, we were a nation of farmers and frontiersmen and traders in much smaller numbers than we have today, and in a much less complex system. (We knew less science. A lot of things were a lot harder, but a lot of things were also less systemically complex and less numerous.) The modern administrative state (FDR/New Deal/etc...) would be very hard to run locally, particularly without federal taxes. (Because without federal taxes, there's no wealth redistribution to deal with the problems of poor communities or individuals, and the more local the scope of the source of funding, the less egalitarian we are as a nation. Also, the harder it is to ensure against disasters that are local in scope, such as hurricanes or Detroit.)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I think what he might mean is anarcho-capitalism which is a more extreme form of libertarianism.
As far as I know there is no such thing as corporate anarchists.
Strange, I thought most Corporatist were Lawful Evil... Chaotic Stupid just doesn't seem to fit.
Common Sense
We're already there: corporations, whether officially designated by existence on a piece of paper in a laywer's desk, or just ideological or cause-based movements tryign to use the government to bring about their vision of society by force (rather than building communities: no, that would be difficult and require personal investment and sacrifice). You guys think the unions aren't corporations? The mass of voters that are so easiily swayed? There is either rule of law...imposed by an elite few who are idealistic enough to care (and whether that law is good or noble or fair or just or virtuous etc. etc. isn't something I said, human law isn't instrinsically just, I'm just pointing this out), or there is rule (warring) of corporations: there is also warring of corporations by mandate of law, or when law rules the corporations can still war against it, but when the rhetoric of "rule fo law" is repetitiously spewed by a president who flaunts it at every opportunity in his own interests, those shared with his "corporate" constituencies, what do you think you have? "Corporate anarchy."
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
We can only hope.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Great comment, but please put your screen name (or if really daring, real one) next time. I wanted to add that the extremes aren't always opposite: an honest look at the current parties shows that in large part, ideologically speaking, they're two sides of the same coin: the "opposites" and "extremes" are their approaches to trying to obtain the same things. Unfortunately we have, pretty much, one (not two) terrible extreme in power (if we're to look from a historical perspective) to which I think we'll get many varied and diverse strong reactions (i.e. more extremes). Being "extreme" isn't always so bad, rather "excessive zealotry that blocks critical thinking, evaluation, and fair mindedness" is the sense that "extreme" is used in these days, which is unfortunate, because it muddles thinking when I think we should all be for "extremely upright/principled/just" people/living/honestly/thinking, etc. etc.. Actually passionate people who have such characteristics? Easily painted as "extreme" (by which really is meant "zealots", but the lowest common denomination won't discern the difference and it'll be influence one way or another, usually easily).
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
The feds actively forced the banks to make loans to unqualified people using a typical carrot and stick approach. The stick was to threaten bringing them in for congressional hearings for bogus crap to make it impossible for them to do business. The carrot was to use Fannie and Freddie which are government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to buy all the known-bad debt from the banks.
Paul Krungman has been explaining since at least November 16, 2008, 5:36 pm. That the Fannie and Freddie (which are no longer GSEs but now 100% government owned through conservatorship) played only a small role in contributing to the Real Estate Bubble. He's linked to supporting evidence of this claim provided by Mark Thoma. He has also provided evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act played only a minor role as well. And he continues to provide more evidence this month.
He has even argued that the USA's federal government should continue to "keep Fannie and Freddie fully engaged in the mortgage-support business" as a form of quantitative easing, at least until the economy (as measured by the unemployment rate) continues operate below capacity.
If you are really interested in knowing about major contributor to the bubble in the Real Estate, Mortgage, and related Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) and Credit Defalt Swap (CDS) Markets, you should read up on Magnitar. I wish I had a clear answer on how to safeguard the non-participaing public from Magnitar-like problems. I'm sure it would have something to due with finanial regulation in the form of capital requirements, total leverage ratio limits and transparentcy in transactions for partisipants in CDO, CDS, and all other current and future financial markets.
Is this THE John Barlow.
Wow!
Hope you and Bobby are still writing.
I sure miss those days.
I would love to vote for a candidate that would restrain spending, hold corporation's feet to the fire, and restore our civil liberties. No such candidate exists. Why vote when there's no one worth voting for?
If that's what you believe, and you think many other people believe that too, why not run yourself? Anyone can become a candidate in the U.S. system. Almost every candidate and political leader we have today started their life doing something other than politics. What better way to counter apathy?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Corporations are Neutral Evil: they use the law when it benefits them, but are just as happy to break it.
"A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple. She sheds no tears for those she kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. She has no love of order and holds no illusion that following laws, traditions, or codes would make her any better or more noble. On the other hand, she doesn't have the restless nature or love of conflict that a chaotic evil villain has." -http://easydamus.com/neutralevil.html
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
if it can't govern anything?
.... to prevent the BP disaster in the gulf.
There's no easy solution. Regulations only matter if they're enforced, and with revolving doors and regulatory capture, they're often not enforced. Often times if regulations only end up blocking the small guy, which is *good* for big companies. Classic example is CPSIA, which has made mickey mouse ballpoint pens and bicycles illegal. (Valves and pen tip contains a trace amount of lead.) Mattel and such can blow a few grand testing every component of a product, because they'll sell tens of thousands. A small manufacturer cannot. The only problem it solved was making politicians seem like they were doing something; lead paint on toys has already been illegal, and manufacturers consistenly recall tainted products.
And of course, I'm neglecting that the powerful have always influenced government through corruption, bribery, lobbying, social connections, revolving door, etc. (eg, the TARP and bank bailouts in the US.) One of the definitions of a governement is the agency that reserves for itself the exclusive right to violence within their borders. With that at their back, the powerful only have more tools at their disposal.
Libertarianism is no utopia, but nor is government 'problem solving' needed when politicians pander to the masses when they get reelected, or when they need favors and donations from the rich and powerful. There is no utopia.
President Obama did receive tremendous amounts of money from special interest. He received $77,000 from BP PAC. No wonder he struggled with not condemning them, they lined his pockets!
Umm.... can't speak for anyone else, but I know I've never really thought the media had so much direct influence on getting a president elected as they did with Obama.
Presidents you could call "media darlings" are few and far between, and I think they come from either camp. JFK was a Democrat who you could say was a media darling, right? To a slightly lesser extent, I think Bill Clinton was too. (Of course, he was trying to copycat JFK in a lot of ways anyway.) On the Republican side, I think Ronald Reagan qualified, if only because of his Hollywood background. ("The Governator", Arnold, may not have gone for presidential status, but he's yet another Republican media darling thanks to his own Hollywood past.)
The key difference with Obama, like I tried to explain in my original message, is the way he was marketed to the public, more like a "cool, revolutionary new product you've GOT to buy!" than anything else. Before Obama, we didn't really see ad campaign posters with artistic head-shots, or the idea of a candidate having his own logo. Plus, they tied it all in with the "historical moment" it would create to elect him as the first black president. This is all unique stuff that I expect we'll see more of in future campaigns.
If the Government confined its duties to those assigned by the Constitution, mutatis mutandis, its job would be much simpler. If they try to run everything, a second civil war would be inevitable.
Basically, the problem is this:
There is enough communication potential that any self-important moron can insert himself into every decision at lower levels of his organization. However, there are so many decisions to make that he can't possibly come up with a well-considered answer on each and every one. Or most of them. Or, really, any of them, because he has to spend a minimum time just reading each one.
And this is happening throughout the whole government. Every decision is being reviewed by a bunch of people, making the process slow to a crawl and making the process a travesty of competence.
>> Protecting and enforcing the values upon which the nation was founded does not require massive micro management.
> I don't know if you realize it but slavery is unconstitutional. I hope you do but it's not clear from what you said there.
You're responding to what you wish he said, not to what he actually said (while accusing him of a strawman, no less). Slavery, by means of the 3/5ths compromise *is* one of the things upon which the nation was founded (though you are correct that we fixed that via amendment). But, even after emancipation, the free market didn't do jack for black people until such time as the government forced it to (segregation and all that). I hope you're not going to say that the constitution fixed segregation, because it didn't.
And for the past hundred years or so, "states rights" has been the rallying cry of actual white-sheet wearing KKK members. It's only recently that other people who, presumably, actually believe that have tried to take it up. I don't think you're one of the KKK types, for the record (though I have, in fact, known such folks), but when people start rallying around a very old argument that was, at least until recently, pretty much exclusive to actual KKK members the second a black guy becomes president... well, tell me, just how do you think that looks?
I don't believe you're a racist. But, come on. You might as well have tried to take back the swastika. Believe it or not, Jefferson wasn't the only founding father. Some of the rest of them said things worth listening to. Hamilton was one of the founders as well and you can't just ignore the people you don't like.
If your target market shifts and you don't change with it, your business will fail. The fault is not the market change, but rather the business and its management for not adapting to the new paradigm. Likewise, the Internet did not break government, but rather any government which fails due to the introduction of the internet failed to adapt. The fault is the overpaid morons who were in control. This has occurred before, but usually for more serious social reasons. Look up what caused the French civil war, American revolution, and American civil war. Each of these events can be traced to an inability or unwillingness to adapt by one or more parties. Unfortunately, it's generally not the stodgy government officials nor the vocal minority of rabble-rousers that pay the bill in blood, but rather the poor masses. Let's hope this revolution caused by information becomes a fight of heated words in a chat room.
I'm pretty sure the government was broken long before the Internet.
But the banks are able to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, itself an extension of the government, and must endure heavy regulation from the government. There's no way to separate that intusive meddling from the decisions made by banks, because there's no way to hypothetically determine what decisions the banks would have made were there no regulation. So your argument against lack of government regulation cannot be true --- it has never been tried and cannot be implicated by this crisis.
Check out this posting on the Recourse Rule, which was an international regulation set up by the Federal Reserve and international banking circles that gave a financial incentive to banks to hold tripe-A rated mortgage backed securities.
The ratings agencies didn't do a very good job of rating MBS's. The Recourse Rule encouraged banks to hold those faulty assets by allowing banks that held those particular assets to have more leverage (to lend more). This meant that those banks that held those securities would be disproportionately profitable until confidence in their balance sheets were shaken by the loss of confidence in MBS's.
By encouraging banks to hold MBS's, the government, through the Federal Reserve, precipitated the crisis. It was like a virus that infected the US financial system and funneled capital to mortgage brokers like Countrywide to make bad mortgages. But they couldn't have made those mortgages if they didn't have the capital --- and this rule provided banks with incentive to provide them that capital.
Terms need wikipedia pages to prove legitimacy now?
FWIW, I read the GP's use of "corporate anarchists" to refer to those who wish for an essentially unfettered market (there's the anarchy) whose primary actors are corporations. I don't quite understand the GP's scare-bolding of Republican and Dick Cheney (or, for that matter, Bob Weir), but the terms he uses, at least, aren't so unclear.
Maybe its instead that it's harder to lie and deceive as in the past now with the internet. Maybe the internet has simply fixed a problem that has been hidden for ages. Seems more likely given human nature.